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What we work

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ITC TOOLS

How we work

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Stories and News

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ITC TOOLS

How we work

Sustainable Business Development

To drive sustainable trade for lasting transformation, we support the development and establishment of social enterprises — a business structure that considers not just profit, but also people and the planet. Our differentiated approach leverages fashion and culture’s unique opportunities as a development engine to build business skills, monetise creativity, export cultural products and create sustainable jobs.



From Sustainability to Circularity

Our network gives partner brands access to organic, local production, and delivers quality and excellence with sensitivity to the surrounding environment. Our sustainability focus influences the partners we choose, the materials we source and the techniques we support training for.

Our Due Diligence System

EFI has long been a champion of ethical production, fair trade and increasingly, environmental sustainability in fashion. As Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) criteria become a more widespread standard for the fashion industry, we offer support to our project beneficiaries with a suite of corporate due diligence and reporting tools to support their efforts.

Our Due Diligence System (DD) is structured around three pillars – protect, respect and remedy. The first pillar consists of the state duty to protect human rights, the second clarifies the duty of business to respect human rights, and the third pillar concerns the access to remedies for victims in the event of harm.

Four essential maintenance activities run the DD system: 

  • On-going risk assessment
  • Taking appropriate action to prevent, mitigate or resolve identified risks.
  • Monitoring implementation and effectiveness of those actions.
  • Consulting and communicating with relevant stakeholders on the actions and outcomes.

These steps represent a process standard that defines responsible business conduct, proactively preventing EFI partner/beneficiary companies from causing social and environmental harm and guiding them in the event of adverse impacts. EFI approach is normative in nature exercised through conducting due diligence and taking the appropriate steps to prevent, mitigate or resolve the risks identified.

Our Supply Chain Assessment Tool sets the entire system in motion: a kickstart audit for assessing the readiness of a brand’s supply chain to engage in sustainable and responsible practices. Alongside the assessment, we offer brand partners our Code of Conduct and our Charter of Ethical Business, developed using the highest international labour & development ethics standards.


Developed with the Fair Labour Association, our Code of Conduct shapes every action taken throughout our supply chain. The 10 points above form the framework that defines our approach to environmental and social governance. The EFI Code of Conduct is available to brands as a tool for building and improving their impact assessments and ethical labour compliance. No forced labour: all workers must have chosen freely to work. No worker must work because he or she is forced, bonded, indentured or trafficked.
Right to freedom of association and collective bargaining: employers/ group heads shall recognize and respect the right of workers to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

No harassment, abuse or discrimination: Firstly, every worker shall be treated with respect and dignity. No worker shall be subject to any physical, sexual, psychological or verbal harassment or abuse. Secondly, no worker shall be subject to any discrimination in hiring, compensation, benefits, access to training, promotion, termination or retirement based on race, co lour, sex, religion, political opinion, social origin, real or perceived medical condition or illness, pregnancy, age, physical or mental disability, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, union membership, genetic characteristics, ethnic group, caste, socio-economic situation or union affiliation.

No child labour: no child under the age of fifteen or the age for completion of compulsory education shall be employed, whichever is higher, unless he is an apprentice. No child shall be assigned to any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.

Reasonable hours of work: except in extraordinary business circumstances, employers/group heads shall not require workers to work more than forty-eight hours and twelve overtime hours per week or the legal limit, whichever is lower. Workers are entitled to at least twenty-four consecutive hours of rest in every seven-day period. Finally, all overtime work shall be consensual and employers/group heads shall not request overtime on a regular basis.

Payment of a living wage: employers/group heads shall (1) strive to provide all workers with a living wage (a living wage enables workers to have a decent standard of living by providing them and their dependants with sufficient income to cover needs such as food, water, housing, education for their children, health care, transport, clothing and all other essential needs. It varies per region and therefore needs to be calculated for every region in which EFI operates); (2) pay at the least the minimum wage required by national laws, collective agreements or the prevailing industry wage, whichever is higher; (3) inform workers about the legal minimum wage; (4) provide any employee benefits required by law; (5) ensure that work is structured in such a way that it provides opportunity for growth in workers’ real income.

Safe and healthy working conditions: employers/group heads shall provide a safe and healthy working environment to prevent accidents and injury to workers. Employers/group heads shall take a proactive approach to health and safety by implementing policies, systems and trainings designed to prevent accidents, injuries and to protect workers’ health.

Guaranteed women’s rights: employers/group heads shall ensure that women and men enjoy the same rights, resources, opportunities and protections at the workplace and shall, in addition, abide by all protective measures of pregnant workers and new mothers as defined by national law.

Minimized impact on the environment: employers/group heads shall take a progressive approach to minimize negative impacts on the environment, and shall aim to continuously monitor their energy and natural resources usage, emissions, discharges, carbon footprint and disposal of wastes.

Respect for community and cultural values: the specific meaning and criteria for the application of the standards shall be negotiated with respect to cultural-specific values of the communities impacted or participating in the supply chain and their terms of application and enforcement defined in consultation with members of the community.
The Charter sets out the principles and values that underpin our approach to ethical and sustainable business and is based on established international human rights instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions. It does not attempt to create new standards or legally binding instruments. Instead, it focuses on how those standards can be applied in the value chain, comprising both social and environmental commitments:
- The foundation of our commitment to ethical trade is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), starting with Article 1: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ (SDGs 1, 10, 16)

- Our purpose is to enable, through work, the freedom, equality, dignity, and rights of all those who contribute to the production of fashion and lifestyle products (SDGs 5, 8, 10)

- We believe that Ethical Fashion and Lifestyle products flow from a process of creation and self-realisation that is ethics-based, from the choice of materials and tools, to the skills and savoir-faire used in the creative process, to respect for all stakeholders in the value chain, including producers, workers and their communities and consumers (SDGs 8, 11, 12)

- As value chain actors, we commit to building chains based on values that we declare with full transparency, traceability, and accountability for our social and environmental impacts (SDGs 6, 7, 13, 14, 15)

- We strive to deploy regenerative business practices where production, consumption, and redistribution promote social and environmental sustainability (SDG 12)

- We promote a vision of shared responsibility between all stakeholders for the human rights and environmental performance of the value chain (SDG 17)

- We acknowledge the value provided by nature, people and society and the need for social, human and natural capital accounting (SDG 12)

- We endeavour to provide work that is meaningful, purposeful and confers dignity (SDG 8)

- We commit to paying taxes, negotiating fair contracts and paying fair wages that reduce poverty, inequality and exclusion (SDGs 1, 10)

- We believe that work must enable people to lead better lives in the communities where production processes take place. We enable this by creating conditions for greater equality of opportunity and treatment, fairness, and equity in the employer-employee relationship, access to education and training, livelihoods, and respect (SDGs 4, 5, 10, and 16).

We use the Order Based Impact Assessment Tool to produce reports for international clients when one of our network social enterprises completes an order for a brand. Assessing impact order by order allows for a more granular look at key social, environmental and governance metrics.

The resulting report covers working hours, jobs generated and who the beneficiaries were, contribution to human development, the impact on environment, and the general compliance with the international guiding principles and labour laws.

The report also shares qualitative information like the order’s impact on the community’s social cohesion and wellbeing, respect and support for community value systems and local livelihood strategies, and artisan testimonials to highlight and document the most impacted voices.

Please contact us by emailing efashion@intracen.org

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The Ethical Fashion Initiative is a programme of the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization.

 

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